Five Spice Street

Can Xue, Karen Gernant, Zeping Chen

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780300142488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Five Spice Street tells the story of a street in an unnamed city whose inhabitants speculate on the life of a mysterious Madam X. The novel interweaves their endless suppositions into a work that is at once political parable and surreal fantasia. Some think X is 50 years old; others that she is 22. Some believe she has occult powers and has thereby enslaved the young men of the street; others think she is a clever trickster playing mind games with the common people. Who is Madam X? How has she brought the good people of Five Spice Street to their knees either in worship or in exasperation? The unknown narrator takes no sides in the endless interplay of visions, arguments, and opinions. The investigation rages, as the street becomes a Walpurgisnacht of speculations, fantasies, and prejudices. Madam X is a vehicle whereby the people bare their souls, through whom they reveal themselves even as they try to penetrate the mystery of her extraordinary powers.

The book is one of the most astonishing novels of the past twenty years. Exploring the collective consciousness of this little street of ordinary people, Can Xue penetrates the deepest existential anxieties of the present day - whether in China or in the West - where the inevitable impermanence of identity struggles with the narrative within which identity must compose itself.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• Preliminaries
• 1. Madam X’s Age and Mr. Q’s Looks
• 2. Madam X’s Occupations
• 3. Madam X’s and the Widow’s Differing Opinions about ‘‘Sex’’
• 4. Mr. Q and His Family
• 5. The Failure of Reeducation
• 6. Madam X Talks Abstractly of Her Experiences with Men
• The Way Things Are Done
• 1. A Few Opinions about the Story’s Beginning
• 2. Some Implications
• 3. The Tails’ Confessions
• 4. Mr. Q’s Character
• 5. Madam X Is Up a Creek
• 6. Who Made the First Move?
• 7. How to Wrap Up All the Issues Left Hanging
• 8. The Rationality of the Widow’s Historical Contribution and Status
• 9. The Vague Positions of Mr. Q and Madam X’s Husband
• 10. How We Reversed the Negative and Elected Madam X Our Representative
• 11. Madam X’s Steps Are Buoyant; On Broad Five Spice Street, She Walks toward Tomorrow